The Clinicians’ Challenge is a joint
initiative by the Ministry of Health and Health Informatics
New Zealand (HiNZ).

Jillian Boniface and Dr Leanne
Liggett from the Southern District Health Board won the top
prize in the new idea category, for their initiative to
build an online immunisation schedule catch-up calculator
for New Zealand. There were 17 other entries in the
category.

Associate Professor Amanda Oakley and her
daughter Emily Oakley earned top marks in the active
project/development category for their dermatological
diagnosis website tool initiative. There were 25 submissions
in this category.

Both winners will receive $8,000 to
continue developing their initiatives. The awards were
presented during HiNZ conference in Rotorua.

The two
runners-up who will each receive $2,000 are: ·
New idea category: Dr Simon Thornley and his team at
Auckland Regional Public Health Service for their electronic
breath ketone sensor · Active
project/development category: Registered nurse Dion Howard
from Capital & Coast DHB and his development team for a
mental health professionals’ app

“Winning this
year’s Challenge is a significant achievement given the
quality of entries received. The competition fosters
creative thinking and encourages our frontline healthcare
professionals to find ways to improve their situation using
digital health solutions,” Ms Cavanagh said.

“It’s
great to see clinicians finding better use of information
and technology to deliver timely, quality patient care and
improve productivity.”

The Clinicians’ Challenge is a
joint initiative by the Ministry of Health and Health
Informatics New Zealand.

Background

Active
project/development category winner: Dermatological
diagnosis toolAssociate Professor Amanda Oakley and
daughter Emily Oakley are looking to develop a website tool
which could transform dermatological diagnosis. They are
proposing to add a search-and-reference tool to the DermNet
NZ website of which Amanda is founder and Emily the
development manager.

The tool would receive images of skin
conditions from clinicians, compare them to skin disease
images in the site’s vast library and instantly return a
summary of the diagnoses associated with similar
images.

This would lead to quicker, easier and more
accurate diagnosing of skin diseases which are very common
worldwide (it’s estimated that one in six visits to a
doctor are for skin complaints and many communities have
very limited access to dermatologists).

The aim is to
partner with technology companies that could train
artificial intelligence software to recognise the most
popular and dangerous skin diseases in images through
pattern recognition.

The tool would be available to
physicians and other healthcare providers, free or at very
low cost, in remote and urban locations globally. Access
would be via any device that has internet connection –
desktop or mobile.

New idea category – Online
immunisation schedule catch-up calculator

Jillian Boniface
and Dr Leanne Liggett from the Southern District Health
Board are proposing to investigate the feasibility of
building an online immunisation schedule catch-up calculator
for New Zealand.

Where immigrant or refugee children have
been vaccinated according to a different country’s
schedule, a catch-up plan is required to bring these
children in line with New Zealand’s national immunisation
schedule.

The work involved is currently carried out
manually by immunisation coordinators, before being passed
back to practice nurses to complete the required
immunisations.

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